Acts 17:25 Wednesday

And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, BECAUSE HE HIMSELF GIVES ALL MEN LIFE and breath and everything else. Acts 17:25

Tonight when I was thinking about what I was going to write about today's meditation, I remembered a quote I had read years ago and had written down in one of my old Bibles. I knew that the quote started with "I learned first through my wife's illness," but I could not remember anymore. Going through some of my old Bibles I found the entire quote, which I thought had been taken from Philip Yancey's book Disappointment with God but did not know for sure, since I had failed to include the source when I typed it and taped it in the front of my Bible.

So believing that the quote was from Philip Yancey's book Disappointment with God I attempted to find the book in my disorganized array of books but couldn't. So like the OCD woman that I am, I called Barnes and Nobel at 9:50 p.m. knowing full well they closed at 10:00. As I was on hold while the clerk was looking for the book, I took off my gown, threw on my clothes, grabbed my earrings with phone-in-hand and was just about ready to head out the door when the clerk informed me he couldn't find Yancey's book, even though the computer said there was one copy in the store.

Taking off my clothes and putting my gown back on I decided to Google the words to see what might come up and sure enough I found them in the book When God and Cancer Meet: True stories of hope and healing, written by Lynn Eib. Eib's book contained the quote I was looking for which was indeed taken from Philip Yancey's book Disappointment with God I had read in 1988.

"In Philip Yancey's book Disappointment with God, he writes about a man named Douglas whom he interviewed because he thought Douglas might feel great disappointment with God. Life, as Yancey describes it, had been very unfair to Douglas. While his wife was battling metastatic breast cancer, Douglas was in a car accident with a drunk driver and suffered a terrible head injury that left him permanently disabled, often in pain, and unable to work full-time.

"But when Yancey asked this victim of unfairness to discuss his disappointment with God, Douglas said he didn't feel any and instead told Yancey the following."

"I have learned to see beyond the physical reality in this world to the spiritual reality. We tend to think 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life--by expecting constant good health, for example--then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment."

"If we develop a relationship with God apart from our life circumstances," said Douglas, then we may be able to hang in there when the physical reality breaks down. We can learn to trust God despite all the unfairness of life." (end of Yancey's quote)

And then Eib continues, "Cancer is very unfair. Even if you "did" something to "get" cancer or didn't do something not to get it, it's still unfair. Maybe you're a smoker diagnosed with lung cancer. Cancer is still unfair, because only about 20 percent of smokers develop lung cancer; 80 percent do not. Maybe you quit smoking twenty or thirty years ago and you still get cancer. Hardly fair!"

"Perhaps you didn't get regular mammograms, PAP smears, or PSAs, and now you have cancer. Guess what? It's still not fair, because lots of people don't get those screening tests and they don't get cancer. Besides some people get them faithfully and the cancer isn't even detected! That seems even more unfair."

"Go ahead and say it.
It's not fair that I have cancer.
It's not fair that my loved one has cancer.
It's not fair that this has happened to us right now.
Say it, but don't be confused that life should be fair because God is.
Life is not fair, but God is not life."

"God is, of course, much bigger than life, and what he is doing in our life will truly change this life as well as ultimately transcend life itself."

God is the GIVER of life. Don't confuse him with BEING life in a world that's unfair.